Named event or history
Orange County’s backcountry uprising against courthouse corruption, from Maddock’s Mill to the Hillsborough riot and the 1771 executions.
In briefOrange County farmers organized in 1766 against high fees, taxes and dishonest county officers, calling a meeting at Maddock's Mill that October. Protest turned violent at the Hillsborough court in September 1770 and ended with the Regulators' defeat at Alamance on May 16, 1771 and the hanging of six at Hillsborough on June 19.
176 indexed works are connected with this event. 5 held at OCPL →
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
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Annie Sutton Cameron's short account of Hillsborough during the Regulator uprising of 1766 to 1771, when backcountry farmers protested colonial officials and courts and Hillsborough, as the seat of Orange County, stood at the center of the conflict. Published by the Orange County Historical Museum in Hillsborough in 1964, 36 pages with illustrations.
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
Carole Watterson Troxler's history of the Regulator movement in Piedmont North Carolina, from land speculation and backcountry resentment through Herman Husband and the Sandy Creek network to the petitions, court proceedings and rioting in Hillsborough and Salisbury, the Battle of Alamance in 1771 and the movement's afterlife in the Revolution. An appendix compiles names in a Regulator context. Published by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources in 2011, 221 pages with illustrations, maps and an index.
Marjoleine Kars's history of the Regulator Rebellion of 1766 to 1771, the backcountry uprising against corrupt county officials that ended at the Battle of Alamance. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was a center of the Regulators' protests and the scene of their 1770 court riot. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2002, 286 pages with illustrations and maps.
Reviewed in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2003).
William S. Powell's short account of the War of the Regulation and its end at the Battle of Alamance on May 16, 1771, when Governor Tryon's militia defeated the backcountry Regulators. The fighting took place in what was then Orange County, and Hillsborough, the county seat, had been the center of the Regulators' grievances and riots. Issued by the State Department of Archives and History, 32 pages with illustrations, facsimiles, a portrait and a folding map; this printing is dated 1976.
Documentary history of the Regulator movement of 1766 to 1771, the backcountry protest against corrupt county officials that centered on Hillsborough and ended at the Battle of Alamance, compiled by William S. Powell, James K. Huhta and Thomas J. Farnham. The volume prints primary sources from 1759 to 1776. Published by the State Department of Archives and History in 1971, xxxix and 626 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in The American Historical Review (1972), The Journal of Southern History (1972).
William Edward Fitch's account of the Regulator movement and the Battle of Alamance of 1771, which his subtitle calls the first battle of the American Revolution, published by Neale in 1905 in a second edition. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was the scene of the Regulators' 1770 courthouse riot and of the hangings that followed Alamance. 307 pages with nine leaves of plates, folding maps and a portrait.
George Micklejohn's sermon on the duty of subjection to the civil powers, preached at Hillsborough in Orange County on Sunday, September 25, 1768, before Governor William Tryon and the troops he had raised against the Regulators. The full title calls the rising the late insurrection. Online reproduction of the original, 15 pages plus one unnumbered page.
History of Maddock's Mill at Hillsborough and of its owners Thomas Hart, Rev. James Frazier, Jesse Benton and Catlett Campbell. Stewart E. Dunaway published it in 2022 through Lulu, 174 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles, appending Benton and Hart family histories.
Governor Josiah Martin's numbered dispatches 21 through 24 to the Earl of Dartmouth, with copies of North Carolina legislation enclosed, reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office file CO 5/303 part 2. Subjects include finance and currency, debt and the courts, judges' wages, the council and assembly, voting and taxes, oaths, litigation, sheriffs, inheritance, prisoners, Irish settlers, customs, quitrents, land grants, surveying and mortgages. Names include Arthur Dobbs, William Dry, Willie Jones, John Rutherford and Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough.
Numbered dispatches 59 through 67 from Governor William Tryon to the Earl of Hillsborough, with enclosures about the Regulators, whose protests broke into riot at Hillsborough in 1770. Reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office CO 5/302. The papers touch on the council and assembly, naval stores and trade, oaths, militia and provincial troops, judges, sheriffs and juries, voting, currency, Cherokee affairs, clergy, quitrents and land, and name officials such as Richard Caswell, Richard Henderson, Maurice Moore and Hugh Waddell.
Dispatches from Josiah Martin, the last royal governor of North Carolina, to Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough, the secretary of state for the colonies for whom the Orange County seat is named, and to the Lords Commissioners in London. Adam Matthew Digital reproduced the file, Colonial Office CO 5/303 part 1, in 2019. Topics include women, medicine and health, land grants, the courts and litigation, German and Protestant migration to the frontier, the Regulators, riot and treason, salt and alcohol imports, Spanish shipping and crime.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this event. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this event itself.
Carole Watterson Troxler's history of the Regulator movement in Piedmont North Carolina, from land speculation and backcountry resentment through Herman Husband and the Sandy Creek network to the petitions, court proceedings and rioting in Hillsborough and Salisbury, the Battle of Alamance in 1771 and the movement's afterlife in the Revolution. An appendix compiles names in a Regulator context. Published by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources in 2011, 221 pages with illustrations, maps and an index.
Marjoleine Kars's history of the Regulator Rebellion of 1766 to 1771, the backcountry uprising against corrupt county officials that ended at the Battle of Alamance. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was a center of the Regulators' protests and the scene of their 1770 court riot. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2002, 286 pages with illustrations and maps.
Annie Sutton Cameron's short account of Hillsborough during the Regulator uprising of 1766 to 1771, when backcountry farmers protested colonial officials and courts and Hillsborough, as the seat of Orange County, stood at the center of the conflict. Published by the Orange County Historical Museum in Hillsborough in 1964, 36 pages with illustrations.
William S. Powell's short account of the War of the Regulation and its end at the Battle of Alamance on May 16, 1771, when Governor Tryon's militia defeated the backcountry Regulators. The fighting took place in what was then Orange County, and Hillsborough, the county seat, had been the center of the Regulators' grievances and riots. Issued by the State Department of Archives and History, 32 pages with illustrations, facsimiles, a portrait and a folding map; this printing is dated 1976.
The letters and papers of William Tryon, royal governor of North Carolina until 1771, edited by William S. Powell in two volumes, 1758 to 1767 and 1768 to 1818. They cover the Regulator troubles, from the riots at Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, to the battle of Alamance in 1771 and the hangings that followed. Tryon, builder of the New Bern palace, later governed New York. Division of Archives and History, 1980; indexed.
Adolph Vermont's four-act drama of the Regulator uprising, first performed on the University of North Carolina campus by its Summer School Dramatic Club on 4 July 1912. Scenes move from Governor Tryon's palace at New Bern to Orange County, on the Eno, at Hillsborough and on the Alamance battlefield, as the heroine, Esther Wake, pleads for the Regulator gunsmith James Pugh; N. W. Walker's introduction admits she may never have lived. Printed at Raleigh, 1913.
Ethel Stephens Arnett's life of David Caldwell (1725 to 1824), pastor of the Buffalo and Alamance Presbyterian churches in Guilford County, who opened a log college in 1767 and practiced medicine he had taught himself. He was present at the Battle of Alamance in 1771, represented Guilford at the Halifax congress that adopted the state constitution in 1776, and sat in the Hillsborough convention of 1788. Greensboro, 1976, 106 pages with an index.
Stewart E. Dunaway's account of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, fought in September 1781 after the Loyalist David Fanning raided Hillsborough and carried off Governor Thomas Burke. Burke, Fanning and the Lindley family, whose mill gave the fight its name, are the people at its center, with the Revolutionary campaigns in North Carolina as the frame. Published in 2009.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
Episodes in this history, earliest first. Each has its own page.
Other dated events here: sixteen of 90, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 90 dated events in the chronology →
Fanning, a lawyer who came to the county town in 1762, qualified as register in March 1763. He went on to buy several town lots and build a large house on the later site of the Masonic Lodge.
People: Edmund Fanning
Using a copy of the province's revised laws bought jointly by two men, one of them a county justice, two Sandy Creek men copied the lawful fees for registering deeds and objected in court to what they were charged. Threatened with arrest for contempt, they gave up, and the justice who half owned the book was soon put out of his commission.
Meeting again, the Regulators asked the former sheriff and a vestryman to meet their committee with lists of taxables, insolvents and public spending, and asked the county's assemblymen to come and show the law for the fees charged on deeds. Two men were chosen to carry the request, but the seizure of a Regulator's mare days later overtook it.
On the day the Regulators met to choose their delegates, Governor Tryon's secretary Edwards reached Hillsborough and put up the governor's proclamation against the disturbances. Fanning set out for Sandy Creek with an armed party the next day.
People: Edmund Fanning
The petition, Advertisement Number Nine, carried 474 names, 31 of them written in German. Tryon told the Regulators to give up their name and pay their taxes, but he also warned officers against excess fees and had the lawful fees published.
People: James Hunter · William Tryon
Two days after Lea delivered the demand, the Regulators answered that their peaceable leaders could restrain the rest only if they stayed free of such a bond, and that they had never meant to rescue the prisoners, only to ask the governor to dissolve the Assembly.
The troops stayed in town through the court term, began to be discharged on September 28, and the last detachment marched away on October 2. The expedition cost the province 4,844 pounds.
People: William Tryon
Writing to Tryon, Tyree Harris said that on recent visits to the Regulators in their homes he had found them willing to pay their taxes.
People: William Tryon
The proclamation extended to fines and forfeitures for everyone involved in the Orange County troubles of the year before.
People: William Tryon
About 150 Regulators crowded the Hillsborough Superior Court, beat the lawyer John Williams, Edmund Fanning and others, and forced Judge Richard Henderson to adjourn; he fled that night. The next day the crowd tore down Fanning's house and wrote mocking judgments on the court docket.
People: Herman Husband · Edmund Fanning · Richard Henderson · Alexander Martin · Thomas Hart
John Butler of the Hawfields was sheriff of Orange County in 1770, at the height of the Regulator crisis, and testified to the General Assembly that the Regulators had obstructed him in carrying out his duties. A Regulator petition of October 1770 nonetheless named him as one of only two public officials charging fair fees for their services.
A troop of mounted Regulators, turned back from its march on New Bern, came down on Hillsborough, drove residents indoors, took liquor at the tavern and galloped through the streets firing pistols before riding off. Nash says they did no great damage.
Leaving Hillsborough on May 11, Tryon stopped on Sunday at Colonel Mebane's for divine service, then marched to the Haw River, where 23 mounted men under Captain Bullock joined as his only cavalry. He ordered his troops not to take property and reached Alamance Creek on May 14.
People: William Tryon
Governor William Tryon's militia defeated the Regulators at Alamance. James Few, captured on the field, was hanged at Tryon's camp the next day.
People: William Tryon · Herman Husband
After the Battle of Alamance, Regulator prisoners were tried at Hillsborough and twelve were condemned for treason. Six were pardoned; on June 19 Governor Tryon's army marched the others to a gallows east of town and hanged them, among them Benjamin Merrill, Robert Messer, Robert Matear and James Pugh. James Few had been hanged at camp on May 17.
People: William Tryon
In 1963 the North Carolina Society of the Colonial Dames of America erected a marble slab monument to the six Regulators hanged at Hillsborough in June 1771, placing it next to the historic Hughes Academy schoolhouse in Hillsborough. The men's grave, thought to lie near the Eno, has never been found.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
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Picture: Petition of Orange County to Governor Tryon, 1768. Public domain. [Governor William Tryon: Petition of Orange County, 1768.] 1768. Colonial Governors' Papers, State Archives of North Carolina.
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